Bans, partner programmes, baby sharks: A look at YouTube by the numbers

Hindustan Times

4 days ago

19.4 to 20 billion
That's how many videos have been uploaded to the platform over the past 20 years.
Precise data is hard to come by, since YouTube only released its first such estimate in April. It tends to be cagey about numbers, and won't allow outside agencies to audit its algorithms to study, for instance, why some videos are promoted over others.
19.4 billion public videos is the estimate by researchers at the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure (IDPI) of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who created a software program in 2023 to scrape through the platform and arrive at an estimate.
'While at first glance it looks like YouTube is finally sharing some numbers, the flexibility of its language — for instance, does it include private or deleted videos too? — underscores the need for independent research,' says Ryan McGrady, a senior researcher at IDPI.
94%
of the site's traffic is driven by videos with 10,000 or more views, according to the IDPI study. These videos make up less than 4% of total uploads.
4%
About 4% of videos have no views at all; 74% of videos have no comments; about 32% have no likes, according to the IDPI study.
2.53 billion
people use YouTube per month, according to data from Statista for 2025.
491 million
people use the platform in India, making it the largest YouTube audience in the world.
>3 million
creators are part of the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), launched in 2007 to help people monetise their content (via revenue-sharing from advertisements, fan-funding features and product placement).
1,000 subscribers
To be eligible for YPP, a channel must have at least 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 public watch hours in the previous 12 months (with a separate set of parameters in play for YouTube Shorts).
15 billion
That's how many times Baby Shark Dance, that absurdly annoying and persistent earworm by the South Korean edutainment company Pinkfong, has been viewed since it was uploaded in 2016. Pinkfong's version (the origins of the song are unclear) was sung by the 10-year-old Korean-American Hope Segoine.
5 billion
That's how many times South Korean rapper Psy's Gangnam Style has been viewed, since it was released in 2012. It was the first video to hit one billion views on YouTube.
'...what was so special about that one song? I still don't know, to this day,' Psy told The New York Times, in 2022.
405 million
With over 405 million subscribers, MrBeast aka Jimmy Donaldson is the world's wealthiest YouTuber. At 27, he is worth an estimated $1 billion and is the world's only known self-made billionaire under 30.
He started out at 13, with videos about gaming hacks and gaming fails. More recently, he has had millions of views for videos in which he conducts what is now called stunt philanthropy (Tipping the Pizza Delivery Guy $10,000; Buying a Homeless Guy A Home). He has also segued into food and fundraising. Donaldson owns MrBeast Burgers and the chocolate and snack brand Feastables. He is co-founder of Team Trees, launched in 2019, with a target of planting 20 million trees, via donations; it has raised $24 million so far. In 2021, he also co-founded Team Seas, aimed at ocean conservancy and clean-up operations; it has raised over $30 million.
10 million dislikes
The dubious record of YouTube video with the most dislikes goes… to YouTube. The platform's Rewind 2018: Everyone Controls Rewind, a recap of its biggest cultural trends in 2018 — featuring clips posted by Will Smith, Trevor Noah, Bhuvan Bam and others — was accused of being self-serving, gimmicky and forced (among other things).
2.9 million channels
containing more than 47 million videos were taken down between January and March this year, for violating guidelines, YouTube has said. Three strikes on YouTube results in automatic termination. The most common violations include spam videos, 'misleading' content, scams and nudity.
2.1 million
India topped the list of countries with most videos taken down: 2.1 million, between January and March alone. Brazil (1.3 million) and the US (889,816) make up the top 3.
There has been criticism of how loosely 'misleading' is defined by YouTube, and how differently it is enforced in different countries. There has likewise been criticism of how bans on people and changes in regulations are issued, enforced and repealed in arbitrary ways.
US President Donald Trump, for instance, was banned from posting on YouTube after the Capitol riots of 2021, but his channel was reinstated in 2023. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was also banned, in 2018, but resurfaced in a controversial interview with YouTuber Logan Paul the following year.
Content moderators, meanwhile, have now been told that up to half of a video may contain offending content, up from the previous cap of 25%, The New York Times reported on June 9. The policy shift, though not publicly declared, was introduced in training material for the army of content moderators that, alongside AI-led algorithms, work to weed out material deemed unfit by the platform.